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CONTACT: Soheila Esfahani at soheilaesfahani@gmail.com
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Soheila Esfahani would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council, The Region of Waterloo Arts Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Region of Waterloo Arts Fund

detail of painting by Soheila Esfahani

CURRENT EXHIBITION

The Short View

Recent Acquisitions from the McIntosh Gallery Collection: Angela Grauerholz, Meryl McMaster, and Soheila Esfahani

April 5- July 11, 2025

Curated by Rachel Deiterding

McIntosh Gallery
London, ON

Each artwork in the McIntosh Gallery collection has individual, yet intersecting histories. It is these moments of intersection, or patterns of collecting, that tell the Gallery’s story.

Holding Patterns: the short view marks the beginning of a comprehensive inquiry into the McIntosh Gallery collection to makes sense of how more than 4,000 artworks have come together to create this valuable resource. Considering a selection of artworks collected since 2020, the short view looks to the recent past. This reflection emphasizes some of the conversations that have been entangled with the collection over the past several years and poses critical questions about what it means to collect.

Soheila Esfahani, Meryl McMaster, and Angela Grauerholz are all concerned with collecting, whether this is through the personal ephemera that we use to document and define our sense of self; efforts to objectively order, categorize, and control the natural world; or institutional commitments to preserve cultural memory that begrudgingly remain susceptible to the passing of time. As McIntosh Gallery undertakes a detailed assessment of the collection, the recent past provides critical tools to inform the future. Each artwork has much to teach us about inclinations to collect across contexts and inspires new approaches to collecting. The Reference Table, a resource hub and study space, invites visitors to reflect on the complicated questions of collections alongside the gallery. Together, these materials frame the conversation as we consider how we might approach collecting differently moving into the future.

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Becoming Otherwise
Soheila Esfahani, Jessica Karuhanga, Behnaz Fatemi, Imogen Clendinning, Xi Jin, and Racquel Rowe

June 26 – July 10, 2025

Curated by Yijing Li
artLAB Gallery, Western University

Panel Discussion: Thursday, June 26 from 4:30-5:30pm
Reception: Thursday, June 26 from 5:30pm-7pm

How do we unbecome what the world has asked of us?

Becoming Otherwise is not a destination but a process—a call to question what has been imposed, and to imagine new ways of being. Becoming Otherwise brings together the voices of six artists—Soheila Esfahani, Jessica Karuhanga, Imogen Clendinning, Behnaz Fatemi, Xi Jin, and Racquel Rowe—whose works trace ruptures and gestures of resistance woven through the fabric of the everyday. Through acts of disruption, reclamation, and poetic reconfiguration, these artists reimagine identity amidst ongoing legacies of displacement and erasure. Their practices transform personal and collective memory into sites of resistance and renewal, where identity is made, remade, and continuously unfolding.

We are not what they named us
Not in the borders they drew without our voice
We hold our root in the ruin
To unbecome the stories told for us
To gather fragments not as broken
But as constellation
To return
Not to the given
But to the long-forbidden
To our breath
Steady and sovereign

UPCOMING EXHIBITION

CURRENT EXHIBITION

CURRENT EXHIBITION